The agency spent $83.5 million funding 965.7 hours of TV programming -- that's 140 hours more with seven million dollars less than it had in 2009. The board included this warning alongside those figures:

Capped funding, along with increasing production cost and a growing number of project applications, means both the General and Platinum funds are under mounting pressure. We make increasingly difficult choices as we juggle constrained funds, a growing pool of successful series, and the desire to create opportunities for new ideas to be supported.

There were certainly some successes: the top-rating funded shows were both Sunday Theatre dramas: the Billy T biopic and Tangiwai: A Love Story. TV3's top-rating funded show, some way down the list, was Bryan Bruce's controversial Inside Child Poverty, just ahead of 7 Days.

There has been a big change in music funding with the introduction of the Making Tracks scheme, which seems to have done what it was meant to do. From 1216 applications, 324 tracks were funded -- resulting in twice as many video grants and three times as many recording sessions. Again, more with less.

TV plays for music videos continue to head towards irrelevance. "These days the biggest music video bang for ourbuck is coming online." The biggest funded clip on YouTube was Kimbra's 'Good Intent', whose 4,469,021 views accounted for nearly half of the total views for NZ On Air-supported clips.

This graph also shows the internet growing in importance as a music discovery medium:

But radio is still where most people discover music. Also, radio programmers -- and presumably their audiences -- really like Six60.

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Meanwhile, the Ombudsman has forced TVNZ to publish research from last year that shows that three quarters of the country was aware of the now-deceased digital channel in its last few months -- and it was being watched weekly by more than half of Freeview households. In other words, TVNZ 7 was doing quite a bit better than then-Broadcasting minister Jonathan Coleman seemed inclined to admit.

Until now, TVNZ has fought to avoid handing over the numbers to the Save TVNZ 7 group -- and it's taken so long that Save TVNZ 7 itself has now morphed into The Coalition for Better Broadcasting.

The new group was on the warpath this week over Sky's offer to bail out Auckland regional broadcaster Triangle TV with a free channel, 89, on its service from February. Triangle will rename as Face Television. Quoth the CBB:

In the same way that Quench or Raro are described as orange flavoured drink and not orange juice, Face should be described as "public service style" programming because it certainly won’t be the real thing.

But what was Triangle supposed to do? The company closed its digital channel Stratos last year, unable to sustain the cost of digital transmission after a Cabinet about-face on a transition strategy for regional TV, in which Stratos would have played a backbone role. And Triangle still has no way of affording a Freeview slot from Kordia (an SOE) when all analog broadcast is switched off next year.

It was like this: work with Sky (which has, of course, handily burnished its own community credentials by doing the deal) -- or just go out of business. Six regional broadcasters have taken up the $70,000 being offered via NZ On Air under the government's revised transition strategy, but it seems like too little money spread too thinly.

There is, of course, an irony here. While regional broadcasters still have no viable path to digital, even as digital switch-off looms, Sky itself got a sweet deal to get Prime TV on Freeview -- on the guidance of the minister -- in 2009.

I'll be talking to Triangle boss Jim Blackman on Media3 this week. If you'd like to come along to the recording tomorrow evening (ie: Thursday), we'll need you to come to the Villa Dalmacija ballroom, 10 New North Road, at 5.30pm.

I recently looked through all the previous annual reports for how the music video funding was handled. When it started, it was a cool new thing and TV plays were gleefully reported. But by the late '90s, the music video funding got one sentence, a brief mention of how music videos support the holy grail of radio play. But things changed in the mid '00s when the power of online videos started to come into its own and music videos were again seen as being a valuable thing in their own right.

Another interesting change - with the launch of the Making Tracks scheme, NZ On Air no longer funds full albums. Now it's only singles that get funded. This and the singles-dominated music landscape makes me wonder - will we see successful artists who chose not to release albums, deliberately only releasing singles?

its fascinating and exciting the multiple ways an artist/musician can choose to connect to their audience these days - albums / singles are slowly but surely becoming the past (for some) - digital and the online world isn't constrained by physical limits and its good to see making tracks reflect the changing market and at the same time broaden the funding base of the sorts of acts that are eligible and getting funding, the internet has no gate keepers like TV & Radio, nor key demographics and focused sounds that determine success

for some acts its a singles world - for others its whatever they choose

quite exciting where this will lead us I reckon - speaking as a major fan or pre-recorded music

One thing that clicked for me about the TVNZ7 numbers in the wake of that report being released is that it was only 17 January this year that it became possible for Neilsen to track time-shifted viewing. Since TVNZ7 broadcast so much of its material outside peak times, that would've had a significant impact on moment-in-time viewer numbers. Makes the numbers even more bullshit than they already were.

This and the singles-dominated music landscape makes me wonder - will we see successful artists who chose not to release albums, deliberately only releasing singles?

I'm hearing a lot more EPs of late. I assume the powers that be would be hesitant not to cash in on the success of singles with (more lucrative) padded albums. A market for the favorites will remain. I am most surprised that radio still holds such sway.

For info about the Coalition for Better Broadcasting email betterbroadcasting at gmail. We will be rolling soon.

Yes we were on the warpath about the Triangulated Sky but about Sky much more than Triangle. What rankled was Sky's claims of 'giving' Triangle a hand (won't cost them much) without acknowledging that Triangle are giving them a channel free - a very useful channel to round out their offering and increase subscribers.

Triangle are otherwise screwed so we understand their lack of any other options.

Re NZoA annual report - isn't it curious that that "how do you discover new music?" graph includes the 'NZ Listener'... but not 'music magazines'? I find that deeply odd.

Also (as a super duper Broadcasting policy geek) I found this to be the really exciting NZoA release of the week: Online Rights and Public Access: A Discussion PaperHopefully it will encourage the restoration of some of the (currently deleted) TVNZ 7 local programmes to an online home, and - more importantly - look towards the TVNZ Archive and the hundreds of hours of local/cultural content the NZ public invested in (both directly and indirectly) over decades, but which is now a 'business unit' of commercial TV(NZ)... If we really do want to create the definitive NZ AudioVisual Archive.

It’ll be interesting* to see how other local/niche broadcasters cope in a digital world. $70,000 grants to move to Freeview- with its on-going costs- isn’t going to be very effective, I’d have thought. CTV have been talking about it for a while, but I think still analogue only, and time ticking away. Will SuperSkyman come swooping in and ‘help’ CTV too? Anyone know what a Freeview channel costs in transmission fees? According to wiki, “Canterbury TV estimates it will need to pay NZ$1 million a year if it joins Freeview”.The move to digital frees up so much bandwidth (which the govt plans to sell off for millions to telcos) it’ll be deeply ironic (and wrong) if we end up with less choice and an effective Sky monopoly on the platform. *or depressing :(

I wonder what influence Quentin Reade will have in his new role at Kordia. We have 3 tv's, none of which currently run on freeview much since our decoder has crap signal quality. But I don't think we're actually missing much. The kids go to the park to play instead. We get given heaps of kids movies by friends and UHF is actually adequate. We never had tv at home until I was about 7 years old and that wasn't such a bad thing. Sky have a government granted monopoly I'd rather avoid and free view will be a lot like UHF is today in a couple of years I reckon.

@Sacha - I restrained myself from including "... only to be pimped out to live behind a paywall with adverts inserted." But there. I've said it. Wouldn't be surprised to see some of that TVNZ7 content showing up there too.

@Russell - Totally fair enough busy guy - maybe it'll be worth it's own post! Very exciting that some thought is being sent in this direction, although with a slightly different purpose to my ultimate online fantasy. But it is all worthy of a good convo.

So about 500 times cheaper than a certain two hour movie (or is it a three hour movie, I haven't been paying attention?).

Govt spent about $94 million to get the hobbit here, and it's three movies, so it'll be about 8 hours. But yup. And they sacrificed a small portion of our employment laws.

I've been really enjoying a bunch of TV shows that have been turning up on TV this year. 7 Days consistently is good. Nothing Trivial is nice relaxed Sunday night viewing, Tangawai and Billy T shows were both excellent, and I've even enjoyed the bits of NZs got Talent that I haven't fast forwarded through. Media 3 and Backbenchers is coming back. I can probably even forgive them for the GC.

I've been really enjoying a bunch of TV shows that have been turning up on TV this year. 7 Days consistently is good. Nothing Trivial is nice relaxed Sunday night viewing, Tangawai and Billy T shows were both excellent, and I've even enjoyed the bits of NZs got Talent that I haven't fast forwarded through. Media 3 and Backbenchers is coming back. I can probably even forgive them for the GC.

There are some interesting programmes around at present–including good ol’ Shortland Street, which has been dealing with storylines about sexual assault and trauma in a brave way.But I recently contributed to a gathering of Australian media academics in Wollongong and had to declare, a little shamefaced, that were don’t really have anything you could describe as public service television in New Zealand anymore. It was made even crueler by seeing the interesting thing SBS and the ABC were doing in respect of Australian content.I avoided all the gushing over The Hobbit yesterday and feel all the better for it.